Beyond the dogmas, creeds, and metaphysical ideas of religion, there is immediate experience. It is from this primal world that living faith arises. In 2017, we will invite participants to create interactive rites, ritual processions, elaborate images, shrines, icons, temples, and visions. Our theme will occupy the ambiguous ground that lies between reverence and ridicule, faith and belief, the absurd and the stunningly sublime. The human urge to make events, objects, actions, and personalities sacred is protean. It can fix on and inhabit anyone or anything. This year our art theme will release this spirit in the Black Rock Desert.

Yeah, I guess being jaded and hating on others is one way to go... but not my cup of tea. I'm excited at the possibilities for great art, and am curious to see how others interpret the theme. I love the pagoda concept, but am not sure how I feel about indoor man.

As always, I'm "whatever" about the theme (sorry, the eternal theme is "Burn Shit and Blow Shit Up", regardless of the baggage that's hung on it), but I really hate the Man caged in the pagoda. I'm not sure who had the bright idea of taking the symbol of the event, and the beacon we all orient ourselves to for a week, and burying it in a building.

It's a camping trip in the desert, not the redemption of the fallen world - Cryptofishist

Man in the cage. Not liking it at all. The theme fits right into my camps plans this year. If everything works out as planned it will look like we followed the theme. TBAnnounced later. (Not a secret, just not hammered out yet.)

Those aren't buttermilk biscuits I'm lying on Savannah

Pictures or it didn't happen Greycoyote

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.Arthur Schopenhauer

trilobyte wrote:Yeah, I guess being jaded and hating on others is one way to go... but not my cup of tea. I'm excited at the possibilities for great art, and am curious to see how others interpret the theme. I love the pagoda concept, but am not sure how I feel about indoor man.

Jesus Christ, dude, it's Burning Man. Lighten up a little.

This is a great theme. It allows plenty of room for the tiresome vegan yoga crowd to be earnest and annoying, for the White Privilege Ocean customers to pretend that their Selfie Vacation has some mystical component, and for the rest of us to make fun of them! Win-win-win!

I like the 2014 Man - maybe not the skeleton version, but with both feet on terra firma. Although I also am not a big fan of Man in a boxcage pagoda, the theme is growing on me. Think of all that has been done throughout history in the name of ritual - some of it beautiful and some of it terrible and most of it somewhere in the middle. Other than possibly influencing what I make for gifts this year, I doubt the theme will have any direct impact on the Burn for me, but it does give a lot of room for interpretation that could lead to some really interesting art.

Hopefully, now that we have a theme, we can move on to more important business, like complaining about ticket prices.

"No problem is ever solved in the same consciousness that was used to create it." --Albert Einstein

Same old theme...
Rituals:
1. Get a ticket
2. Get a vehicle pass
3. Bitch about not getting a Ticket or Vehicle pass
4. Find a ticket
5. Bitch about the theme
6. Bitch a little more
7. Bitch about Larrys friends getting their Camp-In-A-Box and tickets free
8. Drive, Drive, Drive
9. Build a camp
10. Party Rituals....
11. Pickleback rituals
12. Wait in line and go home.

If it isnt a ritual then you haven't done it before... Quit your bitching...

Plan for the worst, expect the best.
Make the most out of it under any conditions.
If you cannot do that you will never enjoy yourself.

Dr Helix wrote:Make the man flame retardant, but the pagoda highly flammable. Then we watch as the pagoda burns down to reveal the man in his glory. ... ...

I once attended a small private event that was inspired by and paid homage to BM. They had a "Temple Burn", with a Temple of maybe four feet tall, which we could not see inside. It had a "mail" slot, and we stuffed it with written messages -- same concept as the BRC Temple.

When it burned down, it revealed a "Man" inside, made of stout steel, and of a design symbolic of this group.
Even blase old Burner me was impressed.

I like the Theme plenty -- all kinds of potential. But using the word "Temple" for the Man Pavilion is surely an error? I hope, and halfway expect, this will be corrected soon.

I asked the question directly to a key person who builds the Man pavilion. I hope it's corrected and cleared up soon, but it was clear from my questions that there will be TWO installations as they have always been in the past.